CHAPTER 37
AVA'S POV
The realization hit me like a physical blow to the chest, leaving me breathless.
For weeks, I had viewed Draken as this omnipotent, terrifying force who held everyone's life in the palm of his hand. I thought his possessiveness was born entirely from an arrogant need to control his environment. But looking at him now, sitting on the edge of the chaise with the firelight washing over his face, the truth lay bare.
He wasn't powerless back then because he lacked a wolf. He was powerless because he was young, bound by a tyrant king's law.
Beneath the layer of fierce Alpha protective instinct, there wasn't anger. There was an ocean of unresolved, ancient guilt. A king who could command armies, yet spent every single day carrying the weight of the people he couldn't sav
